Illustration of the exoplanet K2-18b
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Apparent signs of alien life on the exoplanet K2-18b may just be statistical noise, according to a new analysis of data from the James Webb Space Telescope.
On 17 April, Nikku Madhusudhan at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues made the stunning claim that K2-18b, a super-Earth 124 light years away, showed strong evidence of an atmosphere containing dimethyl sulphide, a gas that on Earth is only produced by living things.
But Jake Taylor at…
